


Those Who Sow in Tears

by queenbaskerville



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Menstruation, Mostly hurt, Present Tense, Trans Male Character, Transgender Matt, nonlinear storytelling, trans guy matt, traumatic childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 15:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9078007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: The transgender!Matt mini-fic that literally no one asked for.-Matt frowns. Foggy must see it, or he's tired of Matt being quiet, because he elaborates, "The trans thing that I brought up."The headache spikes, but Matt all of a sudden decides that he'd rather do literally anything than have this conversation, so he gets out of bed. "Do you want ice in your water?""I guess that's an 'I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it' response?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote all of this except the very last bit one night in December 2015 and didn't reopen it until today, when I thought, "Hey, it's Christmastime, and this fic has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, but what if I finished it?" Now it's 4:28 AM. 
> 
> I've presented it in an order in which I think it's best experienced, but if you want to read it chronologically (which is good, too), just find number one and proceed to 2, 3, 4, etc until you reach 10. 
> 
> I've read some of the comics and watched s1 of the show. This is an AU anyway, but just so you know, probably not s2 compliant. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS. As there are spoilers, I didn't really label them in the tags, but jump down to the bottom note to read them. Please read them if you feel like you might need to.
> 
> Title from Psalm 126:5 from the NIV Bible, supposedly. I used Google.

**3.**

There's a lot of blood.

This isn't a period, that's for sure.

There's pain, too. But that might be from the beati-- the _training_. It might be from the training.

"Oh, hell," Stick says, and he sounds so-- so-- so _something_ , some mix of anger and disappointment that's different from the usual, and Matt feels like he's failed him, somehow.

  
**5.**

He never tells the nuns.

Him and the other kids learn more about pregnancy-- and premarital sex, and abortion, and sexual sin-- at some point, because this is a Catholic orphanage and it's important that they denounce this sort of thing.

He thinks they're wrong. About a lot of things. But he doesn't care enough to argue. Stay quiet, stay agreeable. He might not be right anyway. He isn't sure.

  
**4.**

 _I'm glad It's dead,_ he thinks, somewhat viciously, after the blood has all been cleaned up and their lesson canceled early and he's in his bed. It's gone, but he can still smell the blood, feel the ghost of It between his legs. The blood smell had lingered in the air, in his nose, in his mouth, acrid and sticky and metallic, copper or iron--

He can't breathe, suddenly, anger drowned by horror and shame. He clutches his rosary beads tightly in his hands, like the pressure will be enough to turn back time and let him swallow the sentence whole.

"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy-- thy-- thy name..."

He realizes that he has started in the wrong place, makes the sign of the cross, and starts over. He prays the rosary until the stuttering stops, until his throat isn't choked up and his eyes aren't wet with tears. He lets his whispers become smooth and steady, prays and prays for hours, and he doesn't sleep that night.

The praying doesn't fix him. He's still glad It's dead.

  
**6.**

For the first few months, Matt's good about changing clothes when Foggy isn't around or isn't awake, but Foggy finds out, eventually. Of course he does. They live together. It was bound to happen.

That's what Matt tells himself, standing anxiously in the middle of the dorm room, tense and clenching his jaw. He's in the middle of removing his shirt. Foggy is supposed to be in class, and today had been hellish on Matt's senses, so he hasn't been paying attention, and Foggy walks in the room while Matt is in the middle of changing into something that felt more like a shirt and less like sandpaper.

Neither of them say anything, for a minute. It's too late to hide it, now, so Matt finishes taking his shirt off, and forces himself to look casual as he tosses it on the bed. He does not think about slurs, or the twin scars underneath his pecs, or disgust, or dorm transfers, or anything. He does _not_.

"Hey, buddy, guess what? Class got canceled," Foggy says cheerfully, like they hadn't just had the most awkward pause ever and Matt isn't standing there with his shirt off-- and his glasses, _fuck_ , he's not wearing his glasses.

"That so?" he says, trying for casual, but there must be some sort of expression on his face, because Foggy's heart is still beating too fast, and not in the arousal kind of way. Maybe it doesn't matter if Matt had been expressionless or not. Of course Foggy's heart is beating too fast. Of course it is. He knows now. He knows, and he's going to--

"Yeah. Put a shirt on and we can go get coffee and muffins, man, I'm starving." Foggy walks over to his side of the room, putting some things down.

_Man._

Matt thinks, if he was anyone else, he might cry. He settles for beaming in Foggy's direction. "Sounds good."

 

**9.**

She's in the conference room, alone.

For a moment, Matt hesitates-- but he wants to help her. Who knows what she's thinking, now? (He has an idea.)

She'd seemed conflicted about the case, and Matt needs her to know that it isn't the wrong thing to do, whether she goes through with it or not.

He walks in slowly, tapping his cane against the doorframe, appearing for all the world like he's going about business normally, but he freezes in place when he hears her sharp intake of breath.

He makes his voice gentle, because the anxiety rolls off her in waves. "Is someone there?"

"I am," she says, and it comes out shaky, unsteady.

He doesn't need the clarification, but he asks anyway. "Layla?"

"Yeah."

Matt reaches for the doorknob, thinking to close it for privacy, but Layla's sudden spike of fear makes him pause again. _She's afraid of me,_ he realizes, and the thought makes him want to beat the shit out of the man who raped her. Violence won't help her right now, though. He steps away from the door. He's loathe to leave it open, but her heartbeat calms a little, and it's enough. He moves next to the door frame-- he won't be an obstacle; he's conveying that she can leave any time she wants-- and then he sits down on the floor, crosslegged. He tilts his head a little, listening-- she's surprised, again, but her heart rate suggests this isn't fear anymore, mostly confusion.

"What're you doing?" she asks after a second passes where he thinks she's staring at him. He knows she's facing him, at least.

"I'm sitting."

A trace of suspicion, but still mostly bafflement. "Why?"

"I thought you might be less afraid of me, this way." No hesitation, voice as smooth as glass, and just as calm, but he knows that this might go poorly.

"I'm not afraid," she snaps. _Lie_.

He lets her have it. "Okay. Do you mind if I stay seated, though? I'm a bit tired."

"....Alright."

There's silence. Matt hears her heartbeat slowing, hears the soft shift of her clothes as she relaxes a little. Some tension leaves her shoulders, but not all of it. He wants to tell her that she's doing the right thing, but she needs to speak first.

He hears the shift of her clothes and of her hair again-- she's turning her face away from him. He thinks her hair might curtain her face from any sighted people who could walk in. "Mom says you're good men. 'Nelson and Murdock are Hell's Kitchen boys through and through.' I didn't really believe her. But I think-- we think you might actually care. That you'd consult for free. That you're not in it for the money."

"We've never been in it for the money," Matt affirms. "We do care, Layla."

She licks her lips. "I don't know if I want to do this. I don't-- I don't want to be up there. Answering questions. About what happened. About what I--"

"I know."

"No, you don't," she snaps, suddenly, pulse racing with rage, and Matt focuses but there isn't the salty splash of smell that comes from tears gathering in someone's eyes. "You don't know what it was like. You don't know _shit_."

"I do know, Layla." Matt says. Licks his lips. He has to make her understand. He's not-- some stranger, presuming things, trying to make her feel bad. He knows. He _knows_. "I do know, and that's why no one is going to make you do this."

"How could you know?" She asks, and it's a whisper, but her pulse still races. "I mean, I know men can be--" She pauses, and Matt fills in the blank. _Raped_.

She doesn't want to say the word. Matt knows the feeling.

"I know it can happen to men, too," she says, finally. "But not the miscarriage part."

Matt isn't hurt by this, because he knows she doesn't mean anything by it. "Maybe not all men," he says, "but some, sure."

She doesn't say anything, but he hears her turn her head back to look at him, so she's probably staring, confused. He keeps talking. "I wasn't always Matt Murdock. Well," he huffs a laugh, "I've always been Matty. But not always _Matthew_."

"I don't understand."

He can't make himself say his dead name. He can't. He hasn't in years, and he can't now. But he can try to explain another way. "When I was born, my father thought that he had a daughter. Eventually he learned that I was his son, at heart."

"Oh."

Silence, again.

Or, not silence. Matt's world is never silent. But it would be silent to anyone else. It's silent to Layla.

"Was it... was it him?"

He tilts his head, not understanding.

"Your dad, I mean. Who..."

The revulsion that sweeps over him would make him stagger, if he was standing up. " _No_. No." He doesn't want to think about that as even being a remote possibility. Refuses to. "It was someone else, later. After my father's death." Matt doesn't want to go so far as to tell her who, _exactly_ , Stick was to him, but he can give her this-- "He was older than me, and stronger, and in a position of power. And I didn't realize it, then, but he-- he was a real asshole."

She laughs-- a short, unexpected burst that makes him smile, too, and this isn't really funny, but there's no trace of humor in her voice when she speaks. "No kidding."

 

**1.**

He knows who he is by the time he's six and a half.

He doesn't know what his name should be, at first, but he decides he wants his dad to keep saying "Matty," because he likes the way it sounds, so after thinking long and hard he comes up with something.

"Daddy."

"Yeah, Matty?"

"I don't want to be Matilda anymore."

"What? What do you mean, kid?"

"I'm Matthew."

Dad's got a weird expression on his face. "...You know, girls can do all the same stuff boys can do."

"I know. But-- _I'm_ not a girl, Dad."

He rubs his hand over his face, then tilts his head, and takes a breath. "Okay. Yeah, okay. Matthew. Matty. Not much different, I guess."

"Still me."

"Yeah."

Dad gets the whiskey down. Matt watches carefully, wondering if Dad's upset, if he's made a mistake. But he's been thinking for a while-- thinking in terms of _boy_ and _he_ and _him_ and _son_ for a while-- and it's _right_.

"Thought about a middle name, yet?" Dad asks, and that actually makes Matt stop, little six-year-old-brain faltering.

"I dunno." _Shrug_.

Dad pours his glass, gets up and goes to the fridge, stops, pauses. "How 'bout Michael?"

"Matthew Michael Murdock," Matt says, letting it roll off his lips. He grins. "I like it."

Dad comes back with a juice box and puts it on the table in front of Matt. "To Matthew Michael Murdock," he says, and he raises his glass.

Matt taps the juice box on the glass and makes a pretend _clink_ sound. It makes Dad smile, and he knows everything is okay.

  
**7.**

The thought comes to Matt, eventually: Foggy might not know what the scars mean.

And then, another: Foggy might not have even _noticed_ them.

It's not like _Matt_ has ever seen them. Maybe they're not very noticeable.

He wonders if he should bring it up, but the thought passes quickly. It's one of the dumbest ideas he's ever had.

He turns out to be wrong, anyway. Foggy saw, and he knew. Matt just doesn't find out about it until they're out for drinks a few weeks later, and Foggy drank a little bit too much.

"Aw, man," Foggy says, and he slaps his thigh. Matt thinks his hand-thigh coordination (he's a comedic genius) is impressive, given that he has to lean on Matt in order to stumble around.

"What's wrong, Fog?" he asks.

"I keep thinking about how I screwed up, when we met."

"You made a good enough impression."

"Peepers, man. Peepers."

"It's alright, Foggy," Matt laughs. "I already told you it was... refreshing."

"But I'm learning, Matt, I'm learning!" Foggy trips over something-- maybe a crack in the pavement, maybe air. He takes a second to chuckle about it before continuing his train of thought, mumbling, "I was really _really_ proud of myself for not putting my foot in my mouth about the trans thing."

Matt doesn't hear what Foggy says after that, if he says anything. He almost drops Foggy.

" _What?"_

Foggy makes some sort of hand gesture and then pats Matt's arm. "You're a bro. Whatever ge-genal-geni- _privates_ you have doesn't change that." A pause, and then he sounds very distraught. "I'm not asking what your gens are!"

"My gens," Matt repeats, but he's still processing the rest of Foggy's slurred words.

"Your gens," Foggy affirms. "Words are hard. But 'm not trying to be rude! No gens. Not my business. Not asking. Nope."

And that's... better than Matt was expecting. But.

He manages to bring Foggy back to the dorms without incident. He lays Foggy gently in bed, tucks him in, waits until he's asleep, and then retrieves all of the beers in their mini-fridge and gets himself _wasted_.

He and Foggy both wake up with wicked hangovers.

"Matt. Matt."

Matt makes an irritated sound from where he's shoved his aching head under his pillow.

"Matt," Foggy whispers, "Can you-- can you get me some water?"

It takes Matt longer than it should to figure out that Foggy is still laying in his own bed, an arm thrown across his face-- presumably to block out sunlight, but maybe not. Matt's not sure what time it is. He doesn't feel like pawing for his watch.

"Fuck off," he says, but he can tell it's probably muffled by the pillow too much to be deciphered by Foggy's ears.

He seems to get the gist of the message, though, by Matt's lack of movement in the direction of the sink or the fridge. "Why are you acting worse than me? You barely drank anything. I remember."

Matt reluctantly withdraws his head from under the pillow, but he refuses to actually get up. "Had a few more than I should've after I put you to bed," he mutters darkly, and there's a pause.

Foggy's either running his hand through his hair or there's a disembodied hand doing it for him. Matt's not entirely sure. The latter doesn't seem right, though, so it's probably the first.

Matt hates hangovers.

Foggy's still in (albeit fairly stationary) motion. "Shit."

Matt makes a questioning sort of _hmm?_ noise in the back of his throat.

"Is it my fault?"

"What?"

"The drinking."

Matt frowns. Foggy must see it, or he's tired of Matt being quiet, because he elaborates, "The trans thing that I brought up."

The headache spikes, but Matt all of a sudden decides that he'd rather do literally anything than have this conversation, so he gets out of bed. "Do you want ice in your water?"

"I guess that's an 'I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it' response?"

Matt gets a plastic cup out of the cabinet and then sort of stops. He drums his fingers on the counter. Foggy usually lets those sort of things go without a comment like that. "You have questions," he states evenly.

"Yeah, but we don't have to talk about it. I mean it, man. I'm sorry I found out like that."

"Like what?" It comes out harsher than Matt meant, but he doesn't hasten to add something to soften it. He wouldn't have been able to explain if someone asked him why not-- he just didn't. He left it hanging sharply the air between them.

"Without your permission. With me, walking in on you changing. I didn't mean to-- I mean, privacy, buddy. I try to respect privacy. You should've had the chance to tell me yourself."

Oh.

"Can I ask one question? Just one? And you don't have to answer," Foggy says, the words tripping out of his mouth in their rush to get out. He's a curious guy by nature.

Matt waves a hand, giving bleak, bleary permission. It's not like he can stop him.

"The article I read about you getting blinded when you were a kid used the name Matthew Murdock."

When Foggy doesn't continue, Matt huffs, "That's not a question," but there's a smile in his voice. "A few months after I turned seven, my dad realized how serious I was about my sense of self, and he had me transferred to a different school. I didn't fully understand the process at the time, but a few guys must've owed him some favors or some money-- or maybe he just signed a few autographs for the right people's kids-- and my name and gender on all my school forms were changed. Puberty hadn't set in yet, of course, and no one knew my previous name, so they all treated me like the boy I was."

"Damn. Smart." Foggy's voice becomes something almost wistful. "I don't know a lot of parents who'd do that for their kids."

"My dad was one of a kind," Matt says, and it only hurts a little. "Much later I'd done enough tutoring and odd jobs to have enough money for testosterone injections, but not much else." He'd gone without a lot of food (or food at all) for long periods of time, trying to stretch the money out. "One of my girlfriends paid for a surgery or two."

Foggy shakes his head, but then must regret it, because he winces and presses a hand to his forehead. "You'd think that her next step would be paying off our college loans and bar tabs. Help a man out, geez." He's making jokes, and it makes Matt's remaining uneasiness settle into quiet contentment in his stomach. "But in all seriousness," Foggy says. "Water?"

"Yeah. Coming right up," Matt says, and it comes out too fond. Too close. But again, he leaves it alone.

 

**2.**

Matt gets his first period not more than a week after he starts his real training with Stick.

He's more annoyed than startled. He already knew what a period was-- he'd been learning to control his senses one day in the park, and he'd smelled blood from a woman jogging by, but with some sort of flowery smell trying to cover it up, and something else making it particularly foul.

"Is she okay?" he'd asked, and he'd been subjected to sharp laughter from Stick and then a very thorough and kind of crude lesson on human biology that he never wanted to hear again. At least, not from Stick.

So, no. He's not startled by the period. He's been used to blood since he was little. It's just that the nuns don't exactly know that he has a uterus, so asking for the sort of products he needs to take care of this would be... problematic, for him. He might have to steal them. Start stealing pocket change, too, to save up to buy more in the future. The thought makes him frown.

This is not a sin he can whisper in the confessional.

Luckily, he doesn't bleed a lot, so it's only ruined his underwear and not his sheets. He throws the pair away in the dumpsters when no one is around to see him do it because he doesn't have the time to try and get the stains out, and he shows up at Stick's on time. It was babyish to try and skip when he was sick, so why would he skip on his period?

In the middle of sparring, Stick inhales sharply.

"... the hell is that smell, boy?"

A pause, and another inhale, and then he's laughing, and laughing, and laughing. It might just be the worst thing Matt's ever heard.

Stick doesn't stop calling him _Matty_ or _boy_ , but _pussy_ is added to Stick's list of insults by the next day. Matt learns to ignore it.

He learns to ignore the more and more frequent smells of arousal, too. Until-- until.

  
**8.**

"Get out of my city," Matt snarls, and he thinks that maybe he would feel a surge of pride for his tone of voice if a child wasn't dead.

Stick heaves himself up. "Maybe there's hope for you yet," he says, because he has to have the last word.

Matt lets him have it. Lets him go.

A child is dead.

  
**10.**

The credits roll on _Die Hard,_ which had been recommended to Matt and Foggy by Karen when she'd overheard them bickering about what to watch over the weekend before they went to see Foggy's family.

"It's the best Christmas movie ever made," she had declared. "It's the only valid Christmas movie."

They'd both been surprised by her hatred of all (other?) Christmas movies given her enjoyment of poinsettias, tinsel, and other festive holiday things she had spread throughout the office. Her love of terrible Christmas songs and all things gingerbread had also seemed indicative of a love of Christmas movies, but she only accepts _Die Hard_.

"I still prefer _Elf_ , if we're speaking in terms of Christmas," Foggy says, turning off the TV. "It was good, though."

He's nursing a beer. Matt, flopped next to him on the couch, their bodies pressed together for warmth, is nursing a headache. He's not surprised, though. He'd been given a concussion yesterday by a particularly angry neo-Nazi who tried to attack a Jewish woman while she was on her way home from work. It was his last patrol of Hell's Kitchen before leaving for the Nelson family home, and he'd been a bit rushed, so he'd taken a baseball bat to the head, just a little.

Foggy had vociferously denied that anything relating to the collision of baseball bats with heads could be described using the words, "just a little." Claire had agreed with him, but with less volume, since she was busy examining Matt at the time. Now Foggy was quieter, lulled by the promise of sleep tonight and food tomorrow.

"What was your favorite part?" Foggy taps a finger against his beer bottle. It's not quite empty. "I like just about every scene with Hans. Young Alan Rickman is just too hot."

"I liked the part with the dead guy left in the elevator," Matt says, and Foggy hums in agreement. "You described him really well. I don't know if the McCleans getting back together so suddenly can end well, though."

"Maybe." Foggy's hair makes a delicate brushing sound as his head turns; he's trying to find a comfortable position on the couch. "There was lots of kickass day-saving but not enough talk about their actual problems. I think that they'll have a newfound appreciation for life, though, because of their near-death experience." Foggy is using his lawyer voice. "They will subsequently engage in beneficial conversation during John McClean's hospital stay, and everything will go more smoothly. They'll be just fine."

Matt's lips twitch upward. "I thought I was supposed to be the idealist."

Foggy puts his empty beer bottle on the ground and shifts closer to Matt. "I can be a realist and still believe in happy endings."

There's contented quiet. Matt listens to Foggy's heartbeat, steady and sure, and starts to drowse.

The slight uptick in Foggy's heart rate has him a bit more aware, and Foggy's quiet, "Hey, Matt?" has him more awake than that one time (or two times, but he's not telling Foggy) he got stun-gunned in college.

"Yeah?"

"You remember Layla?"

A past client-- of sorts. He remembers the day that her parents brought her to the offices of Nelson and Murdock vividly; all three of them were shaky, and they'd asked for tips about whether or not they should pursue a potential case that had turned into multiple pro bono sessions of legal advice. He remembers, and tenses. Just a bit.

"Yeah."

"On that last day she told me that what you said to her really helped her out." A half-second pause. "Any hidden lawyer-y skills you're not sharing, bud?"

It's light and teasing, a question within a question, and not mistrustful-- not at all like the hurt from the lies about Matt's vigilante activities-- just a friend, curious and a bit concerned.

"I just talked about the past," Matt says, quieter than he meant to, but there's no tremor in his voice, and he's grateful for that.

A pause-- the heavy realization that Foggy had suspected but had hoped was wrong. "Still in the talking mood?" An offer within a question.

"Another day, I think," Matt says, and Foggy nods, and then he announces that he nodded, and Matt smiles, fully relaxing again. Foggy doesn't know everything-- can't, and never will-- but he knows enough for now to be here for Matt. Matt sighs a little, but it's content. He doesn't have to talk about it. He thinks he wants to, but it's stuck in his throat, now. Another day. Soon.

Foggy leans his head on Matt's shoulder. "Merry Christmas, Matty."

It's only December 20th. Matt rests his head on top of Foggy's. It feels like an _I love you_ and a _thank you_ all at once. "Merry Christmas, Foggy."

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: offscreen rape of two minors, implied CSA (of one of said minors), pregnancy caused by rape, miscarriage, some brief discomfort Matt has with his scars left by top surgery, implied transphobia, meal skipping, somebody asking if incest happened (it didn't)
> 
> No slurs or graphic descriptions. In fact, some of this might be too vague. Comments help me edit!
> 
> Also, seeing as I am not a trans guy, a victim of rape, or someone who has had a miscarriage, I will heavily edit this piece or take it down if readers think that this is offensive, misrepresentative, or upsetting. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, as per the usual.  
> Happy Holidays.


End file.
